To hell in a handbasket

"Going to hell in a handbasket", "going to hell in a handcart", "going to hell in a handbag", "go to hell in a bucket",^[1] "sending something to hell in a handbasket" and "something being like hell in a handbasket" are variations on an American allegorical locution of unclear origin, which describes a situation headed for disaster inescapably or precipitately.

New Orleans Mardi Gras day: wagon decorated as mini-float "Going to Hell in a Handbasket" with costume-wearing children

I. Windslow Ayer's 1865 polemic^[2] alleges, "Judge Morris of the Circuit Court of Illinois at an August meeting of Order of the Sons of Liberty said: "Thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would 'send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket.'"^[3]

In popular culture

The phrase also appeared in the title of several published works and other media:

"To Hell in a Handbasket" is the name of humorist H. Allen Smith's 1962 autobiography.
Hell in a Handbasket was the title of a 1988 Star Trek comic book.
Hell in a Handbasket is the title of a 2006 book (ISBN 1585424587) by American cartoonist Tom Tomorrow, who authors the cartoon strip This Modern World.
"Hell in a handbasket" was the name of an undescribed con requiring a trained cat referenced in the 2004 film, Ocean's Twelve.
Hell in a Handbasket is a song from Voltaire's Ooky Spooky album.
Hell in a Handbasket is the title of a 2011 Meat Loaf album
A number of fictional characters have used a name that puns on the phrase, including:
- Helena Handbasket is the name of a character in the TV show Friends. It is the stage name for Chandler's crossdressing dad.
- Helena Handbasket is also a fictional nymph in the 2011 video game Rayman Origins.
- Helena Handbasket is also the pseudonym of the author of Twilight's Last Gleaming: The Decline and Fall of the United States.
2015 video game Fallout 4 in the prequel it includes a "Vault Tec Representative" (Vault Tec is a fictional company in the Fallout franchise) and refers to the phrase "Heck in a handbasket"

References

↑ Hendrickson, Robert (2000). The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms. Infobase Publishing. p. 77. ISBN 1438129920.
↑ Ayer, I. Windslow, The Great North-Western Conspiracy in All Its Startling Details. Chicago: Rounds and James, 1865. p.47 retrieved October 30, 2010
↑ Martin, Gary. "The meaning and origin of the expression: Going to hell in a handbasket". The Phrase Finder. Retrieved October 30, 2010. The first example of 'hell in a hand basket' that I have found in print comes in I. Winslow Ayer's account of events of the American Civil War The Great North-Western Conspiracy, 1865. A very similar but slightly fuller report of Morris's comments was printed in the House Documents of the U.S. Congress, in 1867

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